I read this at lunch. I don't think my coworkers would care to discuss whether they think all their is to their mind is a brain.

On the surface it seems silly but it isn't.

https://amp.abc.net.au/article/101158816

Do I think that there is something more to me than what I am materially? Is my consciousness merely a trick my brain plays on my body to talk it into continuing to survive?

"After Place died in 2000, the university honoured his wish in equally impish fashion, advising visitors that his cerebral organ can be viewed "by appointment only"."

I have a similar policy for my organs.

Consciousness is experienced in the brain, but does originate there? Does it originate in physicality or even in "reality"?

They should charge to view it like Lucy Smith's mummies.

. . . do know that when the brain changes e.g. methamphetamines, Alzheimer's, Pick's disease -- the person definitely changes.
Not at all the same person.

Perhaps "brain" is the machinery, "mind" is how one applies/uses that machinery.
Analogy is car & driver, a defect in either results in suboptimal performance.

Where does "choosing" reside? Don't know, but do know that life experience changes both. So for example, think on it a bit - going to school is more than learning "stuff," you learn how to THINK like a (lawyer, educator, doctor, engineer, architect, philosopher, etc.) - and that makes the world an entirely different place for each.

So learning is mind-bending?

Is there a notable difference based on the veracity of what you learn?

How important a survival trait is the ability to trust, and to be trustworthy?


Random thought: when you’re out of eggs you can’t make French toast.

Your last line makes me suspect you've been hanging around Judic again. Keep it up. There may be hope for you after all.

. . . because making French toast all the eggs end up out of the pan

elderolddog Wrote:
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> Is there a notable difference based on the
> veracity of what you learn?
===============================
So like lawyers & docs working together on a case annoy each other.
Lawyers work in an artificially created knowable system with rules like chess (at least until recently) so there are definite hard lines and they expect definite hard answers. Nature is fuzzy, no hard edges, we didn't create it, so docs live with uncertainty. Demanding hard answers annoys the doc, and the imprecise probabilistic answers of docs annoy the lawyer. Different worlds

> How important a survival trait is the ability to
> trust, and to be trustworthy?
===============================
All could think of was
https://assets.amuniversal.com/6e7ea96079a601332108005056a9545d

;-)

    I have that list, but I won't be visiting them; I'll just have it handy for if they should happen to show up.

Like I interpret Dr.No's remarks--- I think of the brain only as part of the whole. Seeing a brain in a glass case highlights how useless it is on it's own. All dressed up with no where to go.

In my profession I dye a lot of fabric. I find a correlation to this with the brain and with learning.

Absorption has a lot to do with both the brain and with the fabric being dyed. You can put five different fabrics in the same dye bath and you will get five different shades of the same color. Each fabric absorbs or rejects dyes discriminately. Some absorb practically nothing. So go intensely rich. Some go drab. Some go off color favoring the yellow in the dye over the blue. Some are color coated but the color rinses off in the end leaving then with only a slight tint. Like some form of textile alzheimer's?

In the end, no matter what you do to it is still the same cloth made from the same raw goods be it cotton, flax, bamboo or wool.
Just like our bodies we inherit come from different sets of raw goods, different ancestors, whose individual DNA we inherit to become a being that is a new conglomeration slightly different than anything that came before. We come pre-engraved. Every cell of the body.

I like the phrase, "I feel it in my bones" because I do. I feel my father in my bones sometimes. I feel my grandparents in my bones sometimes.

Love this, D&D.

Wood grain comes to mind. (Mind or brain?)

I used to work in the fabric industry many years ago. My company did a great deal of custom work involving patterns and dyes. Like you, I found it fascinating. I used to spend a lot of time under a light box, trying to match colors and dye lots. Blacks and blues in particular could go in a lot of different directions depending on the light. I still think of that part of my life as my "glam career."

Isn't the mind the conscious part of your brain? With emphasis on part of?

The brain can function without the mind--you just won't be aware that bodily functions are still in play.

The mind/consciousness can't function without the brain. Has a destination but no means of transportation. (again copying Dr. No, sorry)

Now some believe that a spirit inhabits the body to run things and is in fact in control of the brain. A spirit sim cart? With the heart as the battery? If true, an awful lot of humanoids need their faulty sim cards replaced. God isn't manufacturing the good stuff anymore. Having supply chain issues like the rest of us and suffering from burn out.

    What is 'proper brain function'?  (Where would we be without all the improper brain functioning we pay good money for?)

    What are the calibration marks 'marking' when they go from 'complete brain malfunction' to '100% brain function'?

    And what if, when they measure D&D's brain function, the needle can be seen pushing beyond the 100% mark?

    when pheromones provoke a two-person, mutual reaction (centered in the brain, like arousal), why does 'society' get to have a say on when you can or can't follow through?

    How come so many people disagree with me!!!  How can society help them?

Because you are disagreeable.

I guess we're not in disagreement about that!

elderolddog Wrote:
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>     What is 'proper brain function'?  

Does it surprise anyone that EOD has to ask?

Maybe we are more than just a brain...

“But this shows the liver can be a major driver of behavior."

https://neurosciencenews.com/liver-brain-behavior-20918/

For philosophy I don't know if it could be a brain in a vat regardless of thinking therefore it is. Descartes demon could be out own bodies.

This philosopher puts it this way.

“ All attempts modern or otherwise to fully understand the complexities of the human soul are forms of hubris. The mind is not the same as the brain. Deal with it.”
https://www.thearticle.com/why-cant-academic-philosophers-write

It's the "what makes you you" argument.

Is what makes you you what goes away under general anesthesia?

https://nautil.us/under-anesthesia-where-do-our-minds-go-20845/

Maybe I'm just a brain, maybe I'm a consciousness piloting a body through meat space, I'm not 100% sure.

No one has addressed the male brain’s double modality, regular day to day brain v. what I’ll call the penis-directed brain.

What’s up with that?!

elderolddog Wrote:
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> No one has addressed the male brain’s double
> modality, regular day to day brain v. what I’ll
> call the penis-directed brain.
>

You mean "thinking with the other head?"

Sí señor

But we don't want to sí, señor!

Put that in your diphthong and smoke it.

Elder Berry Wrote:
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> I read this at lunch. I don't think my coworkers
> would care to discuss whether they think all their
> is to their mind is a brain.
>
> On the surface it seems silly but it isn't.
>



Aren't you just jumping for joy that your state legislature is going to decide for you?

I will try to find this study later. I read a paper stating that the fingers of a musician begin moving to the next position on an instrument micro seconds before the brain actually sends the signal. (That may explain my errors in playing). The study challenges the concept where all the brain or intelligence resides in the body.

Interesting. I have read that muscle memory is real and that you can train your body to do things with less brain interventions.

Learning to walk takes intense concentration . . . But look at us now!

Actually it doesn't. It is one of the rare instinctual abilities in humans. We take longer than other animals because our young are so immature for so long.

I think you missed my point.

Watching my kids learn to walk, I honestly noted that they were taking it (wait for it!) a step at a time; they were concentrating, but still 'failing'. But they'd get up and try again...

Yes, the urge/desire/need 'to ambulate' is instinctual, but the going from non-ambulatory to ambulatory is not a simple "I couldn't and now I can" process.

Muscle memory, or the autonomic nervous system, is what we're talking about. You don't have to 'think' in order to inhale, etc. We consciously apply the steps of a lesson, Eric with his reed instruments, knotheadusc with her guitars until we no longer have to 'think' each step of the process.

I think I didn't understand because I don't know if concentration is what a barely out of babyhood person is doing.

A fawn newly born might look like it is concentrating but who knows if deer do it too?

I take the mind to mean consciousness and self awareness. Our ability to talk about this very concept is the ‘mind’. It is a concept to explain what emerges from the brain: the whole is greater than the sum of its parts.

I don’t know if this makes sense. My brain struggles some days. But my mind knows that so I can point it out to look less stupid.